Being Around Cats

It's been a month of conflict and uneasy peace since one-year-old Creamy earned his indoor privilege alongside my longtime 8 year old indoor/outdoor cat Augie, and they were both given a cat door (which took about 2 weeks of training to get them to use, first with a fully open flap) to go indoors and outdoors into the fully enclosed back yard at will.  This is a dream for both cats!  Creamy to come in and Augie to freely go out,  and both enjoy the new privilege more than anything. It has always seemed to me that Augie has been less aggressive, though he has apparently held on mostly to declaring the bedroom areas as his territory.  Creamy claims the living room and kitchen now, though for a brief moment they were both sleeping on the side couch in the living room (which had been my goal, though I allowed alternatives). There was only one day or so after the beginning (when Creamy had seemed sick from a fight elsewhere and the heat and perhaps neighbor's rotting tras...

I wasn't sure I ever wanted to have Creamy as a second indoor/outdoor cat.  I only really cared to have one indoor cat.  I was fine, in principle, with just taking care of Creamy as a feral outdoor cat, providing food and shelter as needed.  Though he was a friendly cat who would spend much time lounging on the patio and looking needy and not complaining much he wasn't a particularly loving cat.  (He'd rub me as I was bringing food out to the patio for him and that was about it.)  His main interest seemed to be in defeating Augie and adding my house indoors to his conquests, as if that was all there was to it. He had only antagonistic relations with my indoor/outdoor cat Augie, as they are both male (Augie vasectomized and Creamy neutered).  I was shocked from the very beginning as to how they could just not get along for long, despite both being fed by me.  It seemed Augie wasn't so interested in fighting, but Creamy was.  I assumed Creamy had a ...

On August 25, I had Augie behind screen door while I watched Creamy eat 1/2 can (he had 1/4 can last night, and 7/8 can yesterday morning). I opened screen door to get scoop of crunchies for Creamy, and Augie rushed out past the patio into the deep back yard.  Sometime later Augie came back in.  After eating less than half of the dry food, Creamy went out back and rolled around in the dirt, then pooped on the side of the door to my garden tool shed.  That was covered up, but I cleaned up a poop in the grassy area in back of the house (which had just been mowed 2 days ago).  I'm happy if Creamy is comfortable enough in this back yard to stay here more often rather than braving the much more violent street side action, or wherever it was he got that most recent facial scratch, which was originally pencil thin and now obscured.  Nose is looking freckled again, as it did originally, probably from fight wounds. Meanwhile Augie has been comfortable with me on the pati...

By the morning of Tuesday August 17, Augie had officially regained his outdoor privileges which had been taken away just over two years before.  Two years ago it seemed like something outside might be killing him, but now it seemed that his continued health required him to go outside at least twice daily or otherwise he might die from simply not wanting to urinate inside anymore.  This was a radical and high priority lifestyle change, and one he had never stopped begging for. He seemed to be doing OK outside for 5 hours on Monday night, 10pm to 3:30am (coming back inside a few times in between to lick some wet food).  It was a big risk, I feared it might be his dying wish rather than his road to recovery.  What if he wasn't as strong as he thought he was and got stuck someplace, or had some kind of organ failure?  But he came back from his first night out in years seeming more comfortable with himself and his life than ever before, as well as seeming healthier ...

During the month and a half leading up to his neutering, I had been paying more and more attention to the feral cat in my backyard, and dreaming and scheming how to get it spayed or neutered, which until the last day still seemed nearly impossible.   As a result, I was paying less attention to my closest cat Augie , who has lived with me mostly inside for 7 years now . Augie may have been developing very serious urinary issues, partly driven by jealousy.  While I was preoccupied with the new cat, Augie often didn't urinate for a day or two, and when he did it often seemed too small or otherwise abnormal.  I suspected this was a important issue, but I was then feeling it was more important to get the backyard feral, who I thought to be female, spayed.  Otherwise, I'd have kittens, and I didn't want to have another Kitten Emergency as I did 28 years ago.  And it might not be good for the feral cat herself either. Only after I finally released the newly neuter...

Growing up in a motley household including several cranky cats and dogs, I never wanted two cats.  It was only by about the middle of my life, so far, that I even realized I wanted, perhaps needed, one cat.  "One cat is a close friend, two cats are a jungle" I would say.  I was offended by people who said I had cats.  "I have one cat" I would say to correct them. In the last few months, this has changed.  After many weeks of serious preparation and education, last week I trapped a new backyard cat and brought him to the Humane Society for neutering and vaccination.  I will have much to say about this experience and what led up to it and how things are going.  But one of the cutesy things that the Humane Society does, much like most vets, is to give your cat the name you might not have thought of, with your last name as its last name.   So now, I cannot deny, I am a guardian of two cats.  And that is what this blog is about.